In written music, you read it by looking at the notes. The notes are the little blots of ink with lines coming from then on the paper. Oh yeah, the paper is also covered with little groups of five lines and there are wierd symbols at the beginning of each line.

In our example throughout this lesson I will be using a 4-BEAT MEASURE. A measure is a way to group notes together. Each measure has the same number of beats in it unless otherwise specified in the music, but that's all for later lessons.

Part 2: Note Values

What is a beat? A beat is a click on a metronome. It's a unit of time in music. It determines how fast or slow the music goes. It's essential and one can't live without it. Now remember, the example will have 4 beats in one measure.

Here is a list of notes I will be teaching you about in this lesson:
(This includes the spoken name for the note and notation for it)
Whole Note - 1/1
Half Note - 1/2
Quarter Note - 1/4
Eighth Note - 1/8
Sixteenth Note - 1/16

In our example, a whole note would take up the whole measure (hence WHOLE NOTE...). It would use up all four beats. That means if you played a note on your guitar, you would let it ring for 4 counts. A half not is for 2 beats, or half of a measure. A quarter note for 1 count, and that is one quarter of a measure. Here it gets trickier. There are two eighth notes in one quarter note. Since there are four quarter notes in a measure, that means there are 8 eighth notes in a measure. There are 16 sixteenth notes in a measure.

Part 3: Practice

For practice, just take out your metronome and set it at 60 (60 BPM). Start counting and say, "1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1..." on every beat. Those a quarter notes. Then say, "1,and" on the first beat, "2,and" on the second beat, "3,and" on the third beat, and "4,and" on the fourth beat. Those are eight notes. Then for sixteenth notes say "1,e,and,ah" and so on for each set of four beats. Those are sixteenth notes.

Get really good at counting these out evenely and cleanly so that when you begin to play you will be able to play the rhythms in songs well and easily.

Feedback please! This is only my second submitted lesson!

Punkarse

10-14-2005, 03:30 PM

There are several things I could say about this, but i'll stick to a couple:1) It's been done before. And better. 2) Call me old fashioned, but I prefer (unlike most of the US) the original names for note lengths (quaver etc.). You could at least have mentioned them. And anyway, when you get to breves and things like that it makes more sense (how the fuck do you get your head around a 'double whole-note'?).

This is very basic, but there's lots of similar lessons around, what makes your better? Currently, not much.

TheGimpMaster01

10-14-2005, 05:43 PM

not bad ideas.

but wait can u tell me what a quaver is? or like a breve?

and by double whole note do you mean two tied whole notes or one right on top of the other, or two on the same beat on the same pitch?

and well you know i haven't been active before. and so i haven't seen any other posts like this. and anyways, that doesn't really matter, because this is my attempt at it, not someone else's.